September 11, 2007

Pentagon, Petraeus to ‘differ substantially’ on Iraq recommendations

We’ve been hearing more and more lately about internal divisions among top U.S. military officials over Iraq policy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff want troop numbers cut in half over the next year, whereas Petraeus sees a massive force staying in Iraq indefinitely. Adm. William J. Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command and Petraeus’ superior, began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops just over a week ago. (The conflict between Petraeus and Fallon was compared by one senior civilian official to “Armageddon.”)

Indeed, McClatchy reported two weeks ago, “In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won’t make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month’s strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations.”

Apparently, at least one major contingent at the Defense Department is planning to push back against Petraeus’ conclusions — and recommend a very different course.

NEWSWEEK has learned that a separate internal report being prepared by a Pentagon working group will “differ substantially” from Petraeus’s recommendations, according to an official who is privy to the ongoing discussions but would speak about them only on condition of anonymity. An early version of the report, which is currently being drafted and is expected to be completed by the beginning of next year, will “recommend a very rapid reduction in American forces: as much as two-thirds of the existing force very quickly, while keeping the remainder there.”

The strategy will involve unwinding the still large U.S. presence in big forward operation bases and putting smaller teams in outposts. “There is interest at senior levels [of the Pentagon] in getting alternative views” to Petraeus, the official said. Among others, Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon is known to want to draw down faster than Petraeus.

This is not only interesting on its face, but it also has political implications — congressional Democrats and Republicans who are tired of backing a policy that doesn’t work can embrace the recommendations of senior military leaders at the Pentagon who want to see a very rapid reduction to U.S. troop numbers.

Petraeus’s draw-down recommendations have outraged critics of the war who accuse him of merely doing Bush’s bidding and adjusting his recommendations to the politics of the Hill. (“General Betray Us,” the leftwing group MoveOn.org called him in a series of newspaper ads on Monday.) Even some supporters of the surge effort wonder whether Petraeus isn’t thinking as much about selling the war as winning it. “It depends on how this recommendation is framed,” said Dan Senor, a former top official with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq who is now working part-time as an adviser to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “If it’s framed as a recommendation out of a position of strength, that things are going well and therefore we can afford to reduce our troop levels, that’s fine. If, however, it is interpreted as throwing a bone to Congress, in order to placate Congress at expense of our operational capacity, then that’s not good.”

John Arquilla, an intelligence and counterinsurgency expert at the Naval Postgraduate School, is even harsher in his assessment of Petraeus. “I think Colin Powell used dodgy information to get us into the war, and Petraeus is using dodgy information to keep us there,” he said. “His political talking points are all very clear: the continued references he made to the danger of Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example, even though it represents only somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the total insurgency. The continued references to Iran, when in fact the Iranians have had a lot to do with stability in the Shiite portion of the country. And it’s not at all clear why things are a little better now. Is it because there are more troops, or is it because we’re negotiating with the insurgents and have moved to small operating outposts? On any given day we don’t have more than 20,000 troops operating. The glacial pace of reductions beggars the imagination.”

Bush is going to officially embrace Petraeus’ recommendations this week, and I don’t doubt that Bush’s allies will call on Congress to do the same — or risk being labeled “anti-military.”

But therein lies the rub: military officials don’t agree, and many would side with congressional Dems in shaping the policy.

Stay tuned.

 
Discussion

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14 Comments
1.
On September 11th, 2007 at 2:59 pm, bubba said:

Interesting that Bush is trying to have a Crocker and Petraeus set a policy that would make Bush the biggest cut-n-runner from the Iraq war.

2.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:16 pm, petorado said:

Good for Adm. Fallon and those in the Pentagon that don’t wish to see our military run into the ground for a mistaken war. Bush has been the jockey that took a thoroughbred of a military machine and went to the whip for far too long. If Bush isn’t stopped, he will be left beating a dead horse. While Petraeus shows how good he is at Capitol Hill politics to suit his own career, if he were a better politician over in Iraq we’d be done with this mess. But MoveOn.org is exactly right: he is betraying his own troops to bask in the political favor of the biggest loser of a president this nation ever had.

3.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:17 pm, Anne said:

My question is, where are representatives from these other departments, agencies and commissions to discuss their findings side-by-side with Petraeus and Crocker? Why is this just the P & C show, without the pressure of confronting directly those who do not agree with their assessments or their methods for reaching them?

It’s being left to the the Senators to serve as the spokespeople for these opposing views, and that’s making it easier for P & C to dismiss them.

4.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:37 pm, David W. said:

It’s being left to the the Senators to serve as the spokespeople for these opposing views, and that’s making it easier for P & C to dismiss them.

So invite them to appear before the Senate and answer a few questions then.

5.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:39 pm, Chris said:

“The Joint Chiefs of Staff want troop numbers cut in half over the next year, whereas Petraeus sees a massive force staying in Iraq indefinitely.”

Why do the Joint Chiefs hate the troops, and America, and Bush? How dare they contradict Petraeus? How dare Petraeus’s *boss* tell him what to do?

(/sarcasm)

Wait a fucking minute. How dare Petraeus tell his boss to pound sand? Isn’t there something called the chain of command that people in the military are, um, I don’t know, maybe supposed to follow? I mean, that’s certainly what *I*’ve understood from all of Bush’s whiny rants about how *he* is Teh Decider and Teh Commander-in-Chief, and therefore people have to let him have his way.

Funny how the “Support the troops!” and “Support the generals!” voices only seem to speak up when the troops and generals agree with them. It’s almost like… nah, it couldn’t be… it seems like… but they complain that we shouldn’t play politics, so surely they couldn’t be… fuck, I guess there is only one explanation: they’re completely full of shit because they’re partisan fucking hacks.

And they complain about being identified that way because it would undercut their political power, so Democrats, ever fearful, agree not to agree on any course of action that involves any kind of conflict or confrontation.

6.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:39 pm, Anne said:

Hence my question – where are they?

Seems like poor planning to me, but I guess that’s nothing new.

7.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:39 pm, Rick said:

If it’s not going to be completed until the beginning of next year what good will is it?

8.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:43 pm, Curmudgeon said:

Point of clarification: Does the sentence, “On any given day we don’t have more than 20,000 troops operating.”, mean that we’ve got about 140,000 troops sitting around working on their tans while waiting for the next IED to go off, or what exactly?

Sounds like there’s even more to this that we don’t know about than we thought. Which shouldn’t be a big surprise, by any means.

9.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:58 pm, bjobotts said:

This assessment is based on the idea that things remain the same militarily. Attacking Iran would change the entire background of operations

“His political talking points are all very clear: the continued references he made to the danger of Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example, even though it represents only somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the total insurgency…”
Understand that the 2-5% translates on the high side to 850 members. Al qaeda=850 members. We know what they are fighting for…but the rest? They want US occupying forces out of their country. Bush has it backwards…It’s not when they stand up , we stand down. It’s when we stand down and get out…the Iraqis will stand up. The Iraqis will come to their own agreements out of necessity.
Bush has everything backwards…the longer we stay the worse it will get. Supporting the troops means protecting them and getting them out of harm’s way not forcing them to fight and die policing a civil war, calling their deaths heroic instead of sacrifices to the war profiteers

The generals in the field or anywhere else do not determine policy. So Bush saying fighting the “war” will be determined by them and not by politicians in Washington is dead wrong and backwards. Politicians do indeed determine the battles to be fought and he is a politician. just like senators and congressmen and now Petraeus since he is campaigning for the surge policy.

I wish congress would just work out a scenario where they start withdrawing troops immediately, withhold any funding for anything except troop withdrawal, and watch how quickly things fall into place.
« On Iraq questions, Senate learns from House mistakes | Main

10.
On September 11th, 2007 at 3:58 pm, JKap said:

Is the occupation working? What is the purpose of the occupation? How long do we continue the occupation? Can we “win” the occupation? How do we end the occupation?

I’m sure that the No Peace, More War Movement would disagree with me, but I think that these questions, to some extent, summarize the Iraq debate today.

I know that’s it’s not just me, but I don’t need a military commander to provide to me the answers to those questions. They are as much, if not more, moral questions, as they are strategic questions.

Ultimately, I believe that a major symptom of the malaise cast upon America by the Acting President’s Administration is that the man acting as president is amoral. That is why it would seem that he is so often blissfully ignorant. To him, there is no right or wrong. There is only the “bubble” that provides everything for him, including his brand of morality.

So, to the Coward-In-Chief, staying in Iraq is right without question, because that’s what he was told.

He is simply a slow-coach and someone’s puppet. He is not the President in any traditional sense except that he lives in the White House and his clothes bear the Presidential seal. In a sense George W. Bush is too dumb to even comprehend how awful his legacy is. But I believe that the international criminals actually running Bush’s show are the cunning tyrants that we were forewarned of by Lincoln.

11.
On September 11th, 2007 at 4:11 pm, Racerx said:

From what I hear most of the people running the Pentagon are Republicans, and they probably see the political handwriting on the wall and 2008 is scaring the hell out of ’em. They know that if they don’t find a way to get Crazy George to pull out a lot of troops by the end of next year, then the commie libruls are going to take over the government and if that happens the guns they want might get traded in for some butter.

12.
On September 11th, 2007 at 10:08 pm, libra said:

Among others, Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon is known to want to draw down faster than Petraeus. — CB

It really is a fascinating story. Someone on an earlier thread (Edo, maybe?) mentioned the strict discipline of message among the military — even if Pet-Rat had not been a partisan hack voluntarily and by inclination, he’d have to obey the orders from above, or it would be (metaphorically, at any rate) “off with his head!”.

But the military is even stricter on *hierarchy*; the chain of command… And Per-rat’s *immediate* supervisor is not george, the Grim Reaper, but Adm. Fallon. Ie, Pet should be reporting to, and taking orders from Fallon (not the brush-trimmer), with Fallon reporting to and taking orders from the Chief Monkey. Pet should not be swanning it alll over the Congress, the press and Faux; by rights, it should have been Fallon’s role. And, if the two disagreed, then it should have been *Fallon’s* opinion which was paraded to the public *and* prevailed, while the Pet sat stewing and biting his tongue, like a good soldier.

If we’re going to take our orders-of-thought from the military (something I’m not really happy about), then let’s keep it the way the military do things: following the chain of command, not leapfrogging its links.

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  1. Balloon Juice on September 11th, 2007 at 5:50 pm